The shot that killed RFK was supposedly fired from behind his right ear, from an inch and a half away. There were powder burns around the wound. But all wounds were inflicted with a .22 calibre pistol, in sofar as anyone can tell. Sirhan Sirhan was in front of RFK, at least 3 feet away.

The only thing recovered from the wound was a fragment.

It therefore appears to me that either Sirhan Sirhan was a member of a conspiracy -- which no one has ever alleged -- or there must be a mistake of some kind. There cannot have been two assassins operating independently of each other, using the same weapon -- the most improbable of all assassination weapons, a .22 -- by pure coincidence, in the same place, at the same time, in front of 250 witnesses and dozens of photographers. If it was planned, this isn't the way anyone would plan to do it. What happens if one assassin misses Bobby and shoots the other assassin right between the eyes?

[Putting it in plain English, this is all perfectly impossible. IF there was a "powder burn" on the back of RFK's head, THEN there should be either

a) an "exit wound" in the front of his skull, or b) an "entire bullet" in RFK's brain -- or

b) enough fragments to make up an entire bullet -- the ballistics of which could be compared with Sirhan's revolver. There was neither.

Vicent Bugliosi, who worked on the Sirhan case and discusses it in the end notes to RECLAIMING HISTORY, never mentions the powder burns. RFK was lying with the back of his head on a filthy kitchen floor.

My guess, then (for what it is worth) is that the story of the "powder burns" is the result of a chemical "false positive" caused by some other substance entering the wound from the floor.

All tests have a margin of error and "gunshot powder wound false positives" occur fairly frequently, in 10 to 50% of all cases. Depending on which test you use, a false positive can be caused by the barium contained in urine. So some kitchen employee goes to the urinal, steps in a bit of urine, which in many men's toilets is absolutely inevitable, tracks it around on the floor of the kitchen, RFK is lying is with the back of his head on the floor, bleeding, trace amounts of the urine contaminate a ricochet wound on the back of the head, and presto!

Otherwise, where is the bullet?

In other words, if there is no "exit wound", and no "whole bullet" -- whether or not in one piece -- then the "fragment" was the result of a ricochet and Sirhan acted alone.

It's like the "gas chambers": no holes, no Hoaxoco$t).]

[Changing the analogy, the story of the "powder burns" at the RFK assassination reminds me of the story of the "sound recordings" at both the JFK and RFK assassinations, in which, of course, one cannot hear any "gunshots", but in which there are "electrical impulses" which can be "identified by "computer" by some nerd with "special software". Ha!]

Instead of an intelligent attempt to explain how this happened, what we get is:

- Sirhan was innocent
- Sirhan was a patsy
- Sirhan was framed
- Sirhan was a Manchurian candidate (this theory, by far the most interesting, has the advantage of admitting that Sirhan did it, but fails to provide a culprit, a discernable motive, or even a satisfactory explanation of how the bullet hole -- complete with powder burns -- got into the back of Bobby's head)
- Sirhan was hypnotized (ask a hypnotist if he thinks this is possible)
etc., etc., etc., all more or less without proof.

Sirhan was diagnosed as a schizophrenic.

The JFK assassination is not much better. That the CIA overthrows governments and kills presidents has been well-known for many years. For example, on early November 1, 1963, President Kennedy gave his final approval to a CIA plot to overthrow the President of South Viet Nam, Ngo Dinh Diem, as a result of which both Diem and his brother were both killed, on November 3, followed by 10 years of political chaos in Viet Nam. Kennedy was killed 19 days later. Many people, including myself, considered the Kennedy assassination poetic justice for overthrowing and killing the President of South Viet Nam. The question is whether the CIA would overthrow and murder a President of the United States. To believe so, is to have a total misunderstanding of Kennedy the man: Kennedy the Don Quijote, the great idealist about to transform America. Ha!

If the CIA wanted to kill Kennedy it would arrange for him to have a plane crash. That way, nothing can go wrong, and if anything does go wrong, the newspapers just say, "The Presidential jet developed mechanical trouble today but the pilots were able to land safely".

That the anti-Castro Cubans had a motive to hate Kennedy is obvious. So did many Viet Namese. But nobody accuses the Viet Namese of shooting Kennedy.

Anyone who believes that Castro overthrew the government of the second-richest country in Latin America, a heavily-armed, modern country with a population of 10 million people, two-thirds as large as South Viet Nam (the main island is 766 miles long), with a rag-tag outfit of 800-1500 men, armed with light weapons and living by banditry in the mountains, is a fool.

In January 1958, Castro probably had only a few dozen followers, all in Oriente Province of Cuba. Like all Communist guerrillas, Castro's group lived by terrorizing the same peasantry whom they then proposed to "liberate". It would be interesting to know how many of Fidel's followers were criminals to start with. Many of them were shot by "Che", a pathological killer who was never a doctor.

"Fusilamos, y seguiremos fusilando en cuanto sea necesario. Nuestra lucha es una lucha a muerte."
("We shoot people, and we will continue to shoot them as long as necessary. Our struggle is a struggle to the death". - Che Guevara speaking before the United National General Assembly on December 11, 1964, at a time when the Communists already enjoyed almost complete power and there was probably very little need to shoot anybody. By contrast, Castro was given only 6 years in prison, and served two, for attempting to overthrow the government of Cuba by attacking the Moncada army barracks! The only condition placed upon his release was that he was not permitted to speak over the radio!
So much for Batista, the so-called "fascist dictator" of Cuba.
Yeah, well, if shooting's the game, it's a game two can play.

R.I.P., scumbag.
-C.P.
---

The American State Department put Castro in power by enforcing an arms and ammunition blockade against the Batista government (including military training aircraft which Batista had paid for, but which were never delivered and never refunded). This blockade was enforced all over Central America, in violation of international law and "treaties and assurances" (to borrow a phrase), in the belief that Castro was a "Robin Hood". Castro was a Communist revolutionary known to the police all over Latin America since 1948 (Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia). Then, just when they had Castro safely esconced in power, they had another brilliant idea: we'll over throw Castro with 1500 guys on a beach! The original plan called for 750 guys near Trinidad, a town with an air strip, near the Escambray mountains, in a day time assault.

This was called off by Kennedy because American involvement was too obvious. He gave the CIA four days to come up with another plan, so they had another stroke of genius: 1200 guys, in a nighttime amphibious assault, a tactic which was only successful twice during WWII! The invaders were unfamiliar with that part of the island and the assault boats hit coral reefs (which the CIA had mistaken for seaweed), sinking two boats and losing much heavy equipment. It then turned out that the Bay of Pigs was 80 miles from the Escambray mountains, and surrounded by impenetrable swamp! Kennedy then completed the fiasco by stabbing the invaders in the back and calling off all air support. The last radio message received from the invaders said, "We have nothing left to fight with. How can you people do this to us, our people, our country? Over and out".To disguise American involvement, the invaders were equipped with second-hand weapons requiring over 30 different kinds of ammunition; then they were issued the wrong ammunition for their weapons, so they had to trade amongst themselves; an inconsequential bombing raid over Havana 48 hours ahead of time alerted Castro that something was cooking, so he arrested all suspected opposition members inside Cuba; the secret radio signal to begin uprisings inside Cuba over CIA-controlled Radio SWAN was never broadcast; instead, the Americans loudly and repeatedly announced that they did not support the invasion, thus discouraging underground activity inside Cuba; after which the leaders-in-exile of over 100 anti-Castro resistance organizations were arrested and held incomunicado at secret locations in Florida by the CIA for 48 hours, until it was all over, so they were never able to contract anyone inside Cuba; the invaders were promised "air support" in the form of obsolete B-26 bombers flying from Guatemala, 500 miles away, after which the CIA authorized only one bombing raid, by one single plane, for one hour; but since they had to fly all the way from Guatemala [or, according to some sources, Nicaragua], they got the time zones mixed up, arrived an hour early, and weren't allowed to drop any bombs! Castro's forces were equipped with Czechoslovakian weapons and ammunition; so, within only 30 days of the defeat, the Kennedy-Johnson administration asked Congress for authority to give economic aid to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and expand aid to Yugoslavia and Poland! The US Senate voted 63 to 36 to provide the aid! In addition to which, the United Nations Special Fund, headed by an American, Paul Hoffmann, voted to give Fidel Castro a grant of 1.6 million dollars to assist Cuban agriculture, one of 10 such grants financed by the United States!

Among other things, this indicates -- to me -- that if any agency of the US government ever did decide to assassinate an American President, it would probably bungle the job.

The State Department official chiefly responsible for bringing Castro to power in the first place, William Arthur Wieland, was promoted to an even higher -- and more sensitive -- State Department position, and publicly defended against criticism by JFK himself, at a press conference held on January 24, 1962, despite Wieland's 12-year record of disastrous "mistakes". The same "mistakes" resulted in the loss of China in 1949: Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was excluded from the Yalta Conference, at which Roosevelt promised an "independent" Manchuria to Stalin, together with enough Japanese industrial infrastructure and military equipment to arm one million Communists; the result was renewed war in China.

Every time the Communists suffered a military reverse, they called for a cease-fire and negotiations, as a result of which the Americans obligingly pressured Chiang-Kai-shek to stop the offensive! Then, when the Communists had regrouped and regained their strength, they began a new offensive and the war started all over again -- a policy known in Chinese as "Ta Ta, Tan Tan", or "fight, fight, talk talk". In the end, Chiang refused to enter a coalition government with the Communists, and Gen. George C. Marshall cut off all military aid to the Nationalists for 18 months.

Chiang Kai-shek
Against stupidity the very gods struggle in vain
C.P.
---

Chiang had airplanes, tanks and vehicles, but no gasoline; he had weapons, but no ammunition. When the Nationalists were reduced to throwing rocks at the Communists and retreating, they were accused of "cowardice" by American newspapers, thus further justifying the denial of all aid, and the country fell to the Communists, followed almost immediately by war in Korea! A coalition government forced on Laos by long-time Soviet apologist and Kennedy appointee Averell Harriman in 1962 produced the same results once again, leading almost immediately to increased levels of warfare in Viet Nam! The inflation that destroyed the Nationalist Chinese economy was deliberately planned in Washington by Harry Dexter White, a Soviet agent, leading to the myth of Chiang's "corruption" (Chiang personally was incorruptible).

JFK was well aware of all of this, because he criticized these policies in at least one public speech, on 30 January 1949, saying, "Our policy in China has reaped the whirlwind. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming unless a coalition government with the Communists was formed, was a crippling blow to the Nationalist government. So concerned were our diplomats and their advisors, the Lattimores, and the Fairbanks, with the imperfections of the diplomatic system in China after 20 years of war, and the tales of corruption in high places, that they lost sight of our tremendous stake in non-Communist China. There were those who claimed, and still claim, that Chinese communism was not really Communism at all, but an advanced agrarian reform movement which did not take directions from Moscow. This is the tragic story of China, whose freedom we once fought to perserve. What our young men have saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away".

In 1949, JFK was a McCarthyite like everybody else. McCarthy was an Irish Catholic, a friend of JFK's father, and often visited the Kennedy family home. JFK was also a personal friend of Richard Nixon, and made a $1000 campaign contribution, signed personally, to Nixon's 1950 Senatorial campaign against a leftist named Helen Gehagan Douglas, saying that Douglas was "not the kind of person" that he, JFK, "wanted to see" in the Senate.

But by the late 50s, anti-Communism was no longer fashionable, except for lip-service purposes at election time, and in 1961 he appointed these same diplomats to top positions.

In other words, the Kennedys were such fantastic political prostitutes that they sold themselves to the McCarthyites; the non-ideological but generally anti-Communist American public; the generally anti-Communist Slovaks, Poles, Italians, Irish and other Catholics; the Southern segregationists; the anti-Castro Cubans; the blacks, Jews, ADL and Communists -- who advocated the same immigration and racial policies as the ADL -- and finally, under Bobby, in 1968, the New Left! The truth is, they just didn't care (principal sources: Weyl, Stormer, Chu, Lasky).

And this is the President that was going to "get us out of Viet Nam"?
What did he kill President Diem for? I think this is the way we got INTO Viet Nam.
AND Irak. This is the way Americans ALWAYS do things: incompetence, interference and betrayal.

One of the excuses for overthrowing Ngo Dinh Diem was "nepotism", i.e., that he placed his relatives in power. JFK did the same thing. If he had any integrity, why did he make his brother Attorney General of the United States, when he, the brother, had never even practiced law?

Related topics:
A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy by Thomas Reeves
Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag by Armando Valladares
American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw - Jim Garrison Kennedy Assassination Trial in New Orleans by James Kirkwood
An Unfinished Life: John Kennedy by Robert Dallek
Antecedentes y Secretos del 9 de Abril [Prior Events and Secrets of April 9] by Alberto Niño
A Racial Crime: James Earl Ray and the Murder of Martin Luther King by Mel Ayton
Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story by Peter Wyden
Bay of Pigs by Victor Andres Triay
Before and After Hinckley: Evaluating Insanity Defense Reform by Henry J Steadman et al
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot
Case Closed by Gerald Posner
Castro el Desleal [Castro the Backstabber] by Serge Raffy (originally written in French as "Castro l'Infidèle") Che Guevara: Anatomía de un Mito (in Spanish) 1 of 8 parts
Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Viet Nam by Seth Jacobs
Conspiracy of One: The Definitive Book on the Kennedy Assassination by Jim Moore
Cuba y su Presidio Político [Cuba and its Political Prison] by Esteban M. Beruvides
Decision for Disaster: Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs by Grayston N. Lynch
Deep Politics And The Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott
Disinformation, Misinformation and the "Conspiracy" to Kill JFK Exposed by Armand Moss
El Bogotazo. Memorias del Olvido [The Bogotá Coup. Forgotten Memories] by Arturo Alape
El Binomio Castro Revolución by [Castro's Double-Edged Revolution] José Ignacio Rasco
Ernesto "Che" Guevara: ¿Mito y Realidad? by Enrique Ros
Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him by Humberto Fontova
False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film by Patricia Lambert
Fidel Castro y el Gatillo Alegre. Sus Años Universitarios [F.C. the Trigger-Happy: His University Years] by Henrique Ros
Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova
Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi
Historia Oculta de los Crímenes de Fidel Castro [Hidden History of F.C.'s Crimes] by Ramón Conte
I Done My Duty: The Complete Story of the Assassination of President McKinley by Jeffery W. Seibert
In Love with Night: The American Romance with Robert Kennedy by Ronald Steele
JFK First Day Evidence: Stored Away for 30 Years in an Old Briefcase, New Evidence is Now Revealed by Former Dallas Police Crime Lab Detective R.W. by Gary SavageJFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation Of The Kennedy Assassination by Larry M. Sturdivan
John F. Kennedy: The Man and the Myth by Victor Lasky
Los crímenes impunes de Fidel Castro [The Unpunished Crimes of F.C.] by Esteban M. Beruvides
Killing the Dream by Gerald Posner
None Dare Call It Treason: 25 Years Later by John Stormer
Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising by Katheleen Hall Jamieson
President Kennedy: Profile of Power by Richard Reeves
Questions of Controversy by Mel Ayton
Questions of Conspiracy by Mel Ayton
RFK: The Man Who Would Be President by Ralph de Toledano
Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi
Red Star Over Cuba by Nathaniel Weyl
Right or Wrong, God Judge Me by John Wilkes Booth
Robert F. Kennedy: The Myth and the Man by Victor Lasky
Senatorial Privilege by Leo Damore
Sins of the Father by Ronald Kessler
Ta, Ta, Tan, Tan, by Valentin Chu
The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty by Álvaro Vargas Llosa
The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersch
The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Mel Ayton
The JFK Assassination: Dispelling the Myth by Mel Ayton
The Kennedy Men by Nellie Bly
The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK by John Hellman
The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity by Dan E. Moldea
We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts by Timothy S. Good (changing and conflicting eye-witness reports of the same event)
With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit by Dale K. Meyers
While You Slept: Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It by John T. Flynn
Who's Who in the JFK Assassination: An A to Z Encyclopedia by Michael Benson